[284] In this text, the Gwenhwyvar who is in the power of Melwas is referred to as Arthur’s second wife Gwenhwyvar, for according to the Welsh Triads (i. 59; ii. 16; iii. 109) there are three wives of Arthur all named Gwenhwyvar. As Sir John Rhŷs observes, no poet has ever availed himself of all three, for the evident reason that they would have spoilt his plot (Arth. Leg., p. 35).
[285] D. ab Gwilym’s Poetry (London, 1789), poem cxi, line 44. Cf. Rhŷs, Arth. Leg., p. 66.
[286] Malory, Book I, c. xxv. One account of Arthur’s sword Caledvwlch or Caleburn describes it as having been made in the Isle of Avalon (Lady Ch. Guest’s Mabinogion, ii. 322 n.; also Myv. Arch., ii. 306).
[287] Malory, Book IX, c. xv; Sir John Rhŷs takes the Lady of the Lake who sends Arthur the sword and the one who aids him afterwards (though, apparently by error, two characters in Malory) as different aspects of the one lake-lady Morgen (Arth. Leg., p. 348).
[288] Merlin explained to Arthur that King Loth’s wife was Arthur’s own sister (Sommer’s Malory, i. 64-5); and King Loth is one of the rulers of the Otherworld.
[289] Book XXI, c. vi.
[290] This poem, according to Gaston Paris, was translated during the late twelfth century from a French original now lost (Romania, x. 471). Cf. Rhŷs, Arth. Leg., p. 127.
[291] Malory, Book XII, cc. iii-x; Rhŷs, Arth. Leg., pp. 145, 164. Galahad, however, does not belong to the more ancient Arthurian romances at all, so far as scholars can determine; and, therefore, too much emphasis ought not to be placed on this episode in connexion with the character of Arthur.
[292] We should like to direct the reader’s attention to the interesting similarity shown between this old story of Kulhwch and Olwen and the fairy legend which we found living in South Wales, and now recorded by us on page [161], under the title of Einion and Olwen. As we have there suggested, the legend seems to be the remnant of a very ancient bardic tale preserved in the oral traditions of the people; and the prevalence of such bardic traditions in a part of Wales where some of the Mabinogion stories either took shape, or from where they drew folk-lore material, would make it probable that there may even be some close relationship between the Olwen of the story and the Olwen of our folk-tale. If it could be shown that there is, we should be able at once to regard both Olwens as ‘Fair-Folk’ or of the Tylwyth Teg, and the quest of Kulhwch as really a journey to the Otherworld to gain a fairy wife.
[293] We may even have in the story of Kulhwch and Olwen a symbolical or mystical account of ancient Brythonic rites of initiation, which have also directly to do with the spiritual world and its invisible inhabitants.